An Extraordinary Flirtation (8 page)

Zoe knew how to make her presence felt. As well as how to make her aunt feel so ancient that it was miraculous she could get around without a cane. Cara performed introductions, reluctantly.

“Charmed,” said Paul, insincerely. This young woman was no more charming than an ill-mannered pup. Interpreting his expression as one of admiration—after all, what else could it be?—Zoe went on to entertain him with a description of a dinner dress that was being made for her, with a worked muslin body, half-high, and a sarcenet skirt trimmed with patent net and ribbon disposed in draperies.

How Paul must dislike this chatter, thought Cara. To have to listen to it served him right. Another time he would perhaps think twice before he burst uninvited in on her. And perhaps he wouldn’t, for he was a man who knew what he wanted and pursued it with assurance. Cara might admire his singleness of purpose more if only it were not directed at herself.

Daisy bounded into the clearing, tail wagging ecstatically, a snapdragon trailing from her mouth, and one ear turned inside out. Ianthe followed, out of breath. She was even more than usually eye-catching today, wrapped in a bright green and gold Indian shawl that had been made into a dress, its wide border forming the hemline. Around her shoulders was draped a large shawl of muslin worked at the border and ends with embroidery, looped down the back with a ribbon bow. Her hair was pinned up in a large chignon, atop which she had placed a frivolous straw hat.

Another member of the family, decided Paul. Hopefully the intrepid Barrow had chosen new clothes for her as well. She greeted him with a brief nod before drawing Cara aside.

“I’m so sorry!” Zoe twitched her skirts fastidiously away from a trailing runner-bean. “I’ve never known my cousin to be so impolite. Not that anyone will scold
her
for it. Considering how she and Cara are always ringing peals over me, it seems monstrous unjust!”

Ianthe clutched at Cara’s hand, distracting her from the interesting spectacle of Paul’s expression growing more and more appalled. Ianthe’s own expression was even more than usually anxious. Cara patted her hand. “Has Beau ripped up at you again, Ianthe?”

“No! Although surely he would, if he found out about it." Ianthe bit her lip. “There is no telling what he might do. Fight a duel, perhaps—or worse!”

Whatever had put her cousin in such a fidget? “Don’t fret. I won’t tell Beau if you think I shouldn’t. Whatever it is!”

Ianthe pressed the handkerchief to her reddened nose. “You think I’m being a goose, and perhaps it’s true, but what if I’m not? Aggravating as Beau is, I don’t wish to see him killed. Because of course he
would
be killed in an affair of honor: you know as well as I that he has no ability whatsoever with weapons of any sort. Oh, I cannot bear it! This was given to me in error.” She thrust a note into Cara’s hand.

“Smitten, that’s what he is!” said Barrow, and tugged the brush through Cara’s hair. Daisy, who had already endured her own brushing, lay sprawled before the fire. “To come all the way to London after you! I told you his affections had become fixed.”

Lady Norwood was seated at her dressing table, across which marched silver-topped jars and bottles. Barrow stood behind her, watching her mistress in the oval looking glass. “Hunting season is over in the country,” Cara retorted. “Therefore, the squire has followed the spoor to town. A man can hardly ride to hounds if the fox isn’t there.”

Barrow brandished the hairbrush. “You and your foxes! The squire is a fine man. What if someone else should catch his eye while you’re shilly-shallying, miss?”

Only to Barrow was Cara still a miss. “Can you be a little less vigorous? Should the squire’s fancy stray, I wouldn’t care a fig.”

“Poppycock!” retorted Barrow. “You’d care more than a fig if you saw the squire dangling after someone else. You like the attention of the gentlemen every bit as much as your flibbertigibbet of a niece.”

Cara had already been treated, several times, to Barrow’s opinion of Zoe. The gentlest of the abigail’s comments had been “hell-born babe.” “Gentlemen don’t dangle after me anymore. Or if they do, it’s Norwood’s fortune they want. Just as it’s Norwood’s fortune Paul Anderley wants, and the Norwood property. I don’t know why you refuse to see that for yourself.”

Barrow saw many things, among them that it was unnatural for a woman to hold property, her mistress being a perfect example, for no sooner had Miss Cara become a widow than she’d begun behaving with pertinacious obstinacy. Although to say the truth, she’d been pig-headed before, but not to this degree. Barrow set down the brush and began to braid the long red-gold hair, muttering dire warnings about being at one’s last prayers and left on the shelf.

If Cara was praying for anything, it was that Barrow would leave her alone so that she could get on with what must be done. “I’m a widow, remember? I’m already
off
the
shelf. But if it’s on the shelf you’ll have me, I am quite happy there.”

Barrow didn’t believe a word of it. Her mistress hadn’t been happy for a long time. She tied a neat green ribbon at the end of the thick braid. “Squire Anderley has a decided partiality for you. You’re an ungrateful girl if you don’t appreciate what a singular stroke of good fortune that is.”

Cara picked up a silver jar, and unscrewed the lid. “A good mount must be serviceably sound as well as good-mannered. Beauty being in the eye of the beholder, those are the qualities at the top of a prospective buyer’s list. And if she turns out to be a kicker, then he must put a red ribbon in her tail.”

Barrow eyed the ribbon she had just tied, which apparently should have been red. “Take care lest you bungle it, my fine lady! The squire is a prize.”

“The squire is a man!” Cara retorted in exasperation. “Much like any other, as near as I can see. Enough, Barrow. Leave me in peace.”

“Hoity-toity!” muttered Barrow, under her breath. Aloud, she suggested various remedies for the headache that had kept her mistress at home.

“No!” protested Cara. “I don’t want water of white poppies, or a poultice of violets, or to have my temples and forehead anointed with oil of roses and juice of sicklewort! Nor do I wish to endure any more lectures. Do go away, Barrow, and leave me to my bed.”

Barrow narrowed her eyes. She knew her mistress well. Appearances to the contrary, Lady Norwood had as queer a kick in her gallop as any other Loversall.

A mere servant, however, could hardly voice her misgivings. Or she
could,
but it would only put her mistress further out of temper. Wearing a martyred expression, the abigail left the room.

Blessed silence. Cara put down the little pot she had been holding, and rubbed her temples. Daisy ambled over from the hearth to drop down at her feet. Cara stroked the setter’s silky back with one bare foot.

Outside, darkness had fallen. Candlelight flickered on the satinwood dressing table, and firelight on the hearth. At this very moment, Beau and Ianthe and Zoe were displaying themselves at Covent Garden during a performance of
Macbeth.
Cara had pleaded a headache to avoid accompanying them. Beau thought she was sulking. Ianthe thought her very brave. Zoe patently thought of nothing but herself.

Brave? She was an utter coward. But Ianthe had been correct in predicting Beau would do something dashing and dramatic and foolhardy if he knew his precious daughter had been offered an insult. Cara stared moodily at her reflection, then got up from the bench. Daisy rose also. “No!” said Cara. “You’re not going with me.” Not especially disappointed—it
was
dark outside—the setter stretched out on the hearth and went back to sleep.

Cara dressed quickly and simply in one of her old gardening gowns, and for the difficulty of lacing them, left off her stays; twisted up her long braid atop her head and secured it there with pins. Then she wrapped herself in a dark cloak. No one would mistake her long for Zoe, for she was taller and more fully formed, but she should pass briefly in the dark, at least long enough to deliver a crushing rejection, a denunciation of ignoble motives, and a demand that paths should never again cross.

And if the deception were discovered, then what? Cara didn’t know. Ianthe’s suggestions had been vague on that point. Before she left the room, Cara rearranged her pillows, pulled the coverlet over them, and extinguished the candles. Anyone who checked on her—Cara knew well that Barrow’s suspicions had been aroused—would think that she slept.

She opened the door and glanced out into the hallway. This was not the first time Cara had crept out of her brother’s house. His servants would not dare try and stop her, but she wanted no report of her strange behavior to get back to Beau, who might fairly ask where she had gone, and why, after vowing that she wished to stay indoors. Cara made her way unchallenged down the dark back staircase, and almost to the little-used side door. There, however, luck abandoned her, not because she was rusty in the practice of sneaking about, which naturally she was, but because Widdle had taken to keeping a jealous eye on the silver plate, inferior though it might be.

The butler squealed as if he’d tripped over a ghost, then peered fearfully about, and relaxed to find Daisy nowhere in sight. “I thought you was a housebreaker, my lady!” he gasped.

“So I see.” Cara eyed the candlestick that the butler held poised above his head. “I’m going out, Widdle. I wish that no one should know about this but ourselves.”

Widdle lowered the candlestick, which to his knowledgeable eye was of significantly higher value than the silver plate. A person might rightly wonder why he was carrying about a candlestick at such an hour. He suspected the lady
did
wonder, from the shrewd look she gave him. Tit for tat, as they said. Widdle announced that he would be as quiet as the grave.

Cara slipped out the side door, and into the street. The night was dark, foggy, and quiet, save for the occasional night-coach and carriage and watchman calling out periodic descriptions of the weather to anyone who hadn’t the eyes to see it for himself. Cara drew her cloak more tightly about her and stayed as close to the houses as she dared.

A scrawny dog darted out from a dark alleyway, startling her so badly that she almost stumbled. Men’s voices echoed out of the fog. Cara ducked between the buildings as two drunken bucks staggered out of the mist. She should have brought Daisy along for company.

No, on second thought she shouldn’t have, because Daisy would have been even more skitterish than she was. To bolster her flagging courage, Cara recited a litany of various past Loversalls. Gwyneth, who had run off with Gypsies and dwelt among them in their encampments in the woods, quite happily from all reports. Leda, who had been seduced by a Russian ambassador, went at length to Moscow, and became a favorite of the Tsar. Ariadne, who had consumed young lovers with an appetite that shocked even the members of her own family, among them a shepherd, a strolling musician, and the son of a coppersmith. In comparison, it seemed extremely poor-spirited of Cara to be starting at the merest sound while merely out, unaccompanied on a late-night stroll. Instead of imagining a bogeyman, a true Loversall would go and investigate, for the creature lurking in the shadows might be one’s own True Love.

Cara already knew that she was not among the more adventurous of the Loversalls. There would be no corsairs for her, no harems, no coppersmiths’ sons or seraglios. The only bed she wished to be in was her own, and now.

Sounds echoed eerily. Street lamps cast only a dim glow into the gloom. What was Zoe thinking, to consider going out so late? Cara couldn’t help but remember every tale she’d ever heard of footpads and murderers, not to mention press gangs and other creatures of the night.

A hackney coach waited at the designated corner, the driver muffled in a heavy coat on his high seat, the horses standing patiently in the fog. Cara’s footsteps slowed. Surely she had not come so far to turn craven now.

Cautiously, she approached the cab. The vehicle appeared to be empty. The driver turned his head to peer down at her.” ‘E said as ye’d be a looker. Bein’ as ye’ve already kept me horses waitin’ overlong, missy, mebbe ye’d get in.”

Did the man think she was a woman of easy virtue? Cara didn’t know whether to be appalled or amused. To hesitate was to be lost, and so she climbed into the cab.

The interior was dark, which was perhaps fortunate, because from every indication it was also none too clean. Unknown substances gritted on the floor beneath her half boots. The air stank of spoiled fish.

The cab rattled through dark streets, around corners, in such a tangle of contrary directions that Cara soon lost all sense of where she was. By the time the cab drew to a stop, she was well and truly lost.

The cabby opened the carriage door and held out his hand. Gingerly, Cara took it and let the man help her down. Impossible to make out his features, between his hat and the muffler wrapped around the lower part of his face, but she sensed that he was young.” ‘E said as ye was to go the front door,” the cabby said, and climbed back up onto his seat. The cobbled street was close to the river, judging from the thickness of the fog.

Before her stood a tall house built in an older style, its top stories rising into gables and jutting out in shallow bays, its lower windows tiny jeweled squares set in designs of ornamental lead, its rooftop adorned with clusters of chimneys with protruding stacks. At least Cara knew she wasn’t in Westminster or Whitehall: this building had survived the Great Fire. Behind her, the hackney clattered off into the night.

What the
devil
was she doing? Cara stared up at the house. Light glowed from several of the old windows. She reminded herself of her family, and the Battle of Hastings, and reluctantly climbed the front steps.

The door was opened by a maidservant in a neat dark gown, white apron, and starched cap. The girl didn’t react to the sight of a lone female on her doorstep with so much as an eyelid’s blink. “If you’ll follow me, please, mum,” she said, and led Cara through a vestibule paved with black marble, past a delicately carved wooden staircase that led to the upper floors, down a hallway inlaid with different colors of wood, to a parlor at the back of the house. There, the girl curtsied and withdrew. The servant had clearly expected her, as had the hackney driver. Cara wondered how she—or Zoe—had been described.